of his violent disillusion with regard to theatrical hopes and
ambitions, took the form of a distaste for London and a determination,
vague enough at first, to breathe for the future in a home of his own by
the sea. He thought of Bournemouth, more definitely of Torquay, but
finally his fate was sealed by his being offered, for the early summer
months of 1896, a small house on the cliff at Point Hill, Playden,
whence he could look down, as from an "eagle's nest," on the exquisite
little red-roofed town of Rye and over the wide floor of the marsh of
Sussex. When the time came for his being turned out of this retreat, he
positively could not face the problem of returning to the breathless
heat of London in August, and he secured the Vicarage in the heart of
Rye itself for two months more. Here, as earlier at Point Hill, I was
his guest, and it was wonderful to observe how his whole moral and
intellectual nature seemed to burgeon and expand in the new and
delicious liberty of country life. We were incessantly in the open air,
on the terrace (for the Vicarage, though musty and dim, possessed, like
the fresher Point Hill, a sea-looking terrace), sauntering round the
little town, or roving for miles and miles over the illimitable flats,
to Winchelsea, to Lydd, to the recesses of Walland Marsh--even, on one
peerless occasion, so far afield as to Midley Chapel and the Romneys.
Never had I known Henry James so radiant, so cheerful or so
self-assured. During the earlier London years there had hung over him a
sort of canopy, a mixture of reserve and deprecation, faintly darkening
the fullness of communion with his character; there always had seemed to
be something indefinably non-conductive between him and those in whom he
had most confidence. While the play-writing fit was on him this had
deepened almost into fretfulness; the complete freedom of intercourse
which is the charm of friendship had been made more and more difficult
by an excess of sensibility. Henry James had become almost what the
French call a _buisson d'epines_. It was therefore surprising and highly
delightful to find that this cloud had ceased to brood over him, and had
floated away, leaving behind it a laughing azure in which quite a new
and charming Henry James stood revealed. The summer of 1896, when by a
succession of happy chances I was much alone with him at Rye, rests in
my recollection as made exquisite by his serene and even playful
uniformity of temper, by the removal of everything which had made
intercourse occasionally difficult, and by the addition of forms of
amenity that had scarcely been foreshadowed. On reflection, however, I
find that I am mixing up memories of June at Point Hill and of September
at the Vicarage with the final Rye adventure, which must now be
chronicled. When he was obliged to turn out of his second refuge, he
returned to London, but with an ever-deepening nostalgia for the little
Sussex town where he had been happy. In the following summer the voice
of Venice called him so loudly that he stayed in London longer than
usual, meaning to spend the autumn and winter in Italy. He thought
meanwhile of Bournemouth and of Saxmundham. He went on his bicycle round
the desolate ghost of Dunwich, but his heart was whispering "Rye" to him
all the while. Nothing then seemed available, however, when suddenly the
unexpected vacancy of the most eligible residence conceivable settled,
in the course of a couple of days, the whole future earthly pilgrimage
of Henry James. The huge fact was immediately announced in a letter of
September 25th, 1897:
I am just drawing a long breath from having signed--a few moments
since--a most portentous parchment: the lease of a smallish,
charming, cheap old house in the country--down at Rye--for 21
years. (It was built about 1705.) It is exactly what I want and
secretly and hopelessly coveted (since knowing it) without
dreaming it would ever fall. But it has fallen--and has a beautiful
room for you (the King's Room--George II's--who slept there);
together with every promise of yielding me an indispensable retreat
from May to October (every year). I hope you are not more sorry to
take up the load of life that awaits, these days, the hunch of
one's shoulders than I am. You'll ask me what I mean by "life."
Come down to Lamb House and I'll tell you.
There were the most delightful possibilities in the property, which
included a small garden and lawn, the whole hemmed in by a peaceful old
red wall, plentifully tapestried with espaliers. The noble tower of Rye
church looked down into it, and Henry James felt that the chimes sounded
sweetly to him as he faced his garden in monastic quiet, the little
market-town packed tightly about him, yet wholly out of sight.
Meanwhile the intellectual release had been none the less marked than
the physical. The earliest result of his final escape from the lures of
the Vivian of the stage had been the composition of a novel, _The Spoils
of Poynton_, in a manner entirely different from that of his earlier
long romances. This was published in 1897, and in the meantime he had
set to work on a longer and more ambitious romance, _What Maisie Knew_.
In these he began the exercise of what has been called his "later
manner," which it would be out of proportion to attempt to define in a
study which purports to be biographical rather than critical. It is
enough to remind the reader familiar with Henry James's writings that in
abandoning the more popular and conventional method of composition he
aimed at nothing less than a revolution in the art of the novelist.
While thus actively engaged in a new scheme of life, he found it more
and more difficult to break "the spell of immobility" which enveloped
him. He who had been so ready to start on any call of impulse in any
direction found it impossible to bring himself to respond, at Christmas,
1897, to the appeal of Madame Alphonse Daudet to come over to Paris to
grace the obsequies of her illustrious husband. The friends--and the
author of _Jack_ was the most intimate of James's Parisian
acquaintances--had not met after 1895, when Daudet had spent a month in
London mainly under the charge of Henry James, since which time the
French novelist's life had been sapped and drained from him by a disease
the symptoms of which were beginning to be painfully manifest when he
was with us in London. The old French friends were now disappearing.
Their places in Henry James's affection were partly filled by Paul
Bourget and by Maurice Barres, whose remarkable and rather "gruesome"
book, _Les Deracines_, now supplied James with an endless subject of
talk and reflection.
The first novel actually completed at Lamb House was _The Awkward Age_,
which was ready for the printers early in 1898. The ecstasy with which
he settled down to appreciate his new surroundings is reflected in that
novel, where the abode of Mr. Longdon is neither more nor less than a
picture of Lamb House. It was a wonderful summer and autumn, and, as
Henry James said: "The air of the place thrilled all the while with the
bliss of birds, the hum of little lives unseen, and the flicker of white
butterflies." The MS. of _The Awkward Age_ was no sooner finished than
he took up the germ of an incident dimly related to him years before at
Addington, by Archbishop Benson, and wove it into _The Turn of the
Screw_, a sort of moral (or immoral) ghost story which not a few readers
consider to be the most powerful of all his writings, and which others
again peculiarly detest. I admit myself to be a hanger-on of the former
group, and I have very vivid recollections of the period when _The Turn
of the Screw_ was being composed. The author discussed it with a freedom
not usual with him. I remember that when he had finished it he said to
me one day: "I had to correct the proofs of my ghost story last night,
and when I had finished them I was so frightened that I was afraid to go
upstairs to bed!"
By the close of 1898 he had got rid of the flat in De Vere Gardens,
which had become a mere burden to him, and had taken what he called an
"invaluable south-looking, Carlton-Gardens-sweeping bedroom" at the
Reform Club in Pall Mall, which served his brief and sudden pilgrimages
to town for many seasons. Lamb House, in the course of this year, became
his almost exclusive residence, and it is to be noted that at the same
time a remarkable change came over the nature of his correspondence. He
had been a meticulous but not very inspired letter-writer in early
youth; his capacity for epistolary composition and his appetite for it
had developed remarkably in the middle years (1882-1890). During the
hectic period of his theatrical ambition it had dwindled again. But when
he settled finally at Rye, spreading himself in luxurious contentment
within the protection of his old brick garden-wall, the pink and purple
surface of which stood in his fancy as a sort of bodyguard of security
passed down for that particular purpose through mild ages of
restfulness, as soon as he sat, with his household gods about him, in
the almost cotton-woolly hush of Lamb House, he began to blossom out
into a correspondent of a new and splendid class. The finest and most
characteristic letters of Henry James start with his fifty-fifth year,
and they continue to expand in volume, in richness and in
self-revelation almost to the close of his life. On this subject Mr.
Percy Lubbock, than whom no one has known better the idiosyncrasies of
Henry James, has described his method of correspondence in a passage
which could not be bettered:
The rich apologies for silence and backwardness that preface so
many of his letters must be interpreted in the light, partly indeed
of his natural luxuriance of phraseology, but much more of his
generous conception of the humblest correspondent's claim on him
for response. He could not answer a brief note of friendliness but
with pages of abounding eloquence. He never dealt in the mere small
change of intercourse; the postcard and the half-sheet did not
exist for him; a few lines of enquiry would bring from him a
bulging packet of manuscript, overwhelming in its disproportion. No
wonder that with this standard of the meaning of a letter he often
groaned under his postal burden. He discharged himself of it, in
general, very late at night; the morning's work left him too much
exhausted for more composition until then. At midnight he would sit
down to his letter-writing and cover sheet after sheet, sometimes
for hours, with his dashing and not very readable script.
Occasionally he would give up a day to the working off of arrears
by dictation, seldom omitting to excuse himself to each
correspondent in turn for the infliction of the "fierce legibility"
of type.
This amplitude of correspondence was the outcome of an affectionate
solicitude for his friends, which led him in another direction, namely,
in that of exercising a hospitality towards them for which he had never
found an opportunity before. He did not, however, choose to collect
anything which might remotely be called "a party"; what he really
preferred was the presence of a single friend at a time, of a companion
who would look after himself in the morning, and be prepared for a
stroll with his host in the afternoon, and for a banquet of untrammelled
conversation under the lamp or on the expanse of the lawn after the
comfortable descent of nightfall.
His practice in regard to such a visitor was always to descend to the
railway station below the town to welcome the guest, who would instantly
recognize his remarkable figure hurrying along the platform. Under the
large soft hat would be visible the large pale face, anxiously scanning
the carriage-windows and breaking into smiles of sunshine when the
new-comer was discovered. Welcome was signified by both hands waved
aloft, lifting the skirts of the customary cloak, like wings. Then,
luggage attended to, and the arm of the guest securely seized, as though
even now there might be an attempt at escape, a slow ascent on foot
would begin up the steep streets, the last and steepest of all leading
to a discreet door which admitted directly to the broad hall of Lamb
House. Within were, to right and left, the pleasant old rooms, with low
windows opening straight into the garden, which was so sheltered and
economized as to seem actually spacious. Further to the left was a lofty
detached room, full of books and lights, where in summer Henry James
usually wrote, secluded from all possible disturbance. The ascent of
arrival from the railway grew to be more and more interesting as time
went on, and as the novelist became more and more a familiar and
respected citizen, it was much interrupted at last by bows from ladies
and salaams from shop-keepers; many little boys and girls, the latter
having often curtsied, had to be greeted and sometimes patted on the
head. These social movements used to inspire in me the inquiry: "Well,
how soon are you to be the Mayor-Elect of Rye?" a pleasantry which was
always well received. So obviously did Henry James, in the process of
years, become the leading inhabitant that it grew to seem no
impossibility. Stranger things had happened! No civic authority would
have been more conscientious and few less efficient.
His outward appearance developed in accordance with his moral and
intellectual expansion. I have said that in early life Henry James was
not "impressive"; as time went on his appearance became, on the
contrary, excessively noticeable and arresting. He removed the beard
which had long disguised his face, and so revealed the strong lines of
mouth and chin, which responded to the majesty of the skull. In the
breadth and smoothness of the head--Henry James became almost wholly
bald early in life--there was at length something sacerdotal. As time
went on, he grew less and less Anglo-Saxon in appearance and more Latin.
I remember once seeing a Canon preaching in the Cathedral of Toulouse
who was the picture of Henry James in his unction, his gravity, and his
vehemence. Sometimes there could be noted--what Henry would have hated
to think existing--a theatrical look which struck the eye, as though he
might be some retired _jeune premier_ of the Francais, _jeune_ no
longer; and often the prelatical expression faded into a fleeting
likeness to one or other celebrated Frenchman of letters (never to any
Englishman or American), somewhat of Lacordaire in the intolerable
scrutiny of the eyes, somewhat of Sainte-Beuve, too, in all except the
mouth, which, though mobile and elastic, gave the impression in rest of
being small. All these comparisons and suggestions, however, must be
taken as the barest hints, intended to mark the tendency of Henry
James's radically powerful and unique outer appearance. The beautiful
modelling of the brows, waxing and waning under the stress of
excitement, is a point which singularly dwells in the memory.
It is very difficult to give an impression of his manner, which was
complex in the extreme, now restrained with a deep reserve, now suddenly
expanding, so as to leave the auditor breathless, into a flood of
exuberance. He had the habit of keeping his friends apart from one
another; his intimacies were contained in many watertight compartments.
He disliked to think that he was the subject of an interchange of
impressions, and though he who discussed everybody and everything with
the most penetrating and analysing curiosity must have known perfectly
well that he also, in his turn, was the theme of endless discussion, he
liked to ignore it and to feign to be a bodiless spectator. Accordingly,
he was not apt to pay for the revelations, confidences, guesses and what
not which he so eagerly demanded and enjoyed by any coin of a similar
species. He begged the human race to plunge into experiences, but he
proposed to take no plunge himself, or at least to have no audience when
he plunged.
So discreet was he, and so like a fountain sealed, that many of those
who were well acquainted with him have supposed that he was mainly a
creature of observation and fancy, and that life stirred his intellect
while leaving his senses untouched. But every now and then he disclosed
to a friend, or rather admitted such a friend to a flash or glimpse of
deeper things. The glimpse was never prolonged or illuminated, it was
like peering down for a moment through some chasm in the rocks dimmed by
the vapour of a clash of waves. One such flash will always leave my
memory dazzled. I was staying alone with Henry James at Rye one summer,
and as twilight deepened we walked together in the garden. I forget by
what meanders we approached the subject, but I suddenly found that in
profuse and enigmatic language he was recounting to me an experience,
something that had happened, not something repeated or imagined. He
spoke of standing on the pavement of a city, in the dusk, and of gazing
upwards across the misty street, watching, watching for the lighting of
a lamp in a window on the third storey. And the lamp blazed out, and
through bursting tears he strained to see what was behind it, the
unapproachable face. And for hours he stood there, wet with the rain,
brushed by the phantom hurrying figures of the scene, and never from
behind the lamp was for one moment visible the face. The mysterious and
poignant revelation closed, and one could make no comment, ask no
question, being throttled oneself by an overpowering emotion. And for a
long time Henry James shuffled beside me in the darkness, shaking the
dew off the laurels, and still there was no sound at all in the garden
but what our heels made crunching the gravel, nor was the silence broken
when suddenly we entered the house and he disappeared for an hour.
But the gossamer thread of narrative must be picked up once more, slight
as it is. Into so cloistered a life the news of the sudden loss of
Edward Burne-Jones in June, 1898, fell with a sensation; he had "seen
the dear man, to my great joy, only a few hours before his death." In
the early spring of the next year Henry James actually summoned
resolution to go abroad again, visiting at Hyeres Paul Bourget and the
Vicomte Melchior de Voguee (of whose _Le Roman Russe_ and other essays he
was a sturdy admirer), and proceeding to Rome, whence he was "whirled by
irresistible Marion Crawford off to Sorrento, Capri, Naples," some of
these now seen for the first time. He came back to England and to Lamb
House at the end of June, to find that his novel of _The Awkward Age_,
which was just published, was being received with a little more
intelligence and sympathetic comprehension than had been the habit of
greeting his productions, what he haughtily, but quite justly, called
"the lurid asininity" of the Press in his regard now beginning to be
sensibly affected by the loyalty of the little clan of those who saw
what he was "driving at" in the new romances, and who valued it as a
pearl of price. Nevertheless, there was still enough thick-witted
denunciation of his novels to fill his own "clan" with anger, while some
even of those who loved him best admitted themselves bewildered by _The
Awkward Age_. Nothing is more steadily cleared away by time than the
impression of obscurity that hangs over a really fine work of
imagination when it is new. Twenty years have now passed, and no candid
reader any longer pretends to find this admirable story "bewildering."
The passing of old friends was partly healed by the coming of new
friends, and it was about this time that Mr. H. G. Wells, Mr. Rudyard
Kipling, and Mr. W. E. Norris began to be visited and corresponded with.
In 1900 and 1901 Henry James was slowly engaged, with luxurious throes
of prolonged composition, in dictating _The Ambassadors_, which he
"tackled and, for various reasons, laid aside," only to attack it again
"with intensity and on the basis of a simplification that made it
easier" until he brought it successfully through its voluminous career.
In the summer of 1902 Mrs. Wharton, who had dedicated to him, as a
stranger, her novel of _The Valley of Decision_, became a personal
acquaintance, and soon, and till the end, one of the most valued and
intimate of his friends. This event synchronized with the publication of
his own great book, _The Wings of a Dove_. It was followed by _The
Golden Bowl_. He now turned from such huge schemes as this--which in his
fatigue he described as "too inordinately drawn out and too inordinately
rubbed in"--to the composition of short stories, in which he found both
rest and refreshment.
On this subject, the capabilities of the _conte_ as a form of peculiarly
polished and finished literature, he regaled me--and doubtless other
friends--at this time with priceless observations. I recall a radiant
August afternoon when we sallied from his high abode and descended to
the mud of the winding waters of the Brede, where, on the shaky bridge
across the river, leaning perilously above the flood, Henry James held
forth on the extraordinary skill of Guy de Maupassant, whose posthumous
collection, _Le Colporteur_, had just reached him, and on the importance
of securing, as that inimitable artist so constantly secured, one
straight, intelligible action which must be the source of all vitality
in what, without it, became a mere wandering anecdote, more or less
vaguely ornamented. Henry James was at this time, I think, himself
engaged upon the series of short stories which ultimately appeared under
the title of _The Better Sort_, each one, as he said, being the
exhibition of a case of experience or conduct. He collected and
published in these years several such volumes of short compositions, in
which he endeavoured, and admirably effected his endeavour, to combine
neatness of handling with that beauty of conception which became more
and more the object of his passionate desire. The reader naturally
recalls such perfect specimens of his craft as _The Real Right Thing and
The Beast in the Jungle_.
For many years he had let his fancy toy with the idea of returning, on a
visit only, to America. In 1904 this project really took shape, and the
long-debated journey actually took place. He terminated another extended
romance, _The Golden Bowl_, and in August set sail for New York,
ostensibly for the purpose of writing a book of American impressions.
The volume called _The American Scene_, published in 1906, gives his
account of the adventure, or rather of certain parts of it. He lived
through the first autumn with his family in the mountains of New
Hampshire, and, after a sojourn in Cambridge, spent Christmas in New
York. He then went south in search of warmth, which he found at last in
Florida. By way of Chicago, St. Louis, and Indianapolis he reached
California in April, 1905. He delivered in various American Colleges two
lectures, specially written for the purpose, which came out as a little
volume in the United States, but have not yet appeared in England. His
impressions of America, in the volume which he published after his
return, stop with Florida, and give therefore no record of the extreme
pleasure which he experienced in California, of which his private
letters were full. He declared, writing on April 5th, 1905, from
Coronado Beach, that "California has completely bowled me over.... The
flowers, the wild flowers, just now in particular, which fairly _rage_
with radiance over the land, are worthy of some purer planet than
this.... It breaks my heart to have so stinted myself here"; but return
eastward was imperative, and in August, 1905, he was back again safe in
the silence of Lamb House.